Most modern sports stadiums and live entertainment facilities, convention centers, halls or arenas and the like (herein also collectively referred to as “entertainment venues”) employ cameras positioned to capture video images at diverse locations within the stadium. The audience at a typical sporting event, for example, can generally view advertisements, instant replays, and other sports related data on the large television screens within the sports stadium itself. Audiences viewing sporting events remotely (e.g., from their homes) can also view video, instant replays, advertisements and other sports related data; however, video feeds that are broadcasted remotely through satellite and cable television networks or displayed at the venue are limited to a single aspects provided for broadcast to remote displays one at a time from venue controlled media or broadcast media directors. Media directors, normally located in a broadcast room/booth, have access to several perspectives of an activity captured by cameras located at the entertainment venue simultaneously and can cause the real time play and replay of various aspects of the action at the event while also enabling commentators to provide comments about what is being displayed. Video feeds are typically transmitted/broadcasted under licensing arrangements with broadcasting entities for viewing by a remote viewing audience.
Fans/spectators of an entertainment venue activity have been limited in the past over what video perspectives they can view because video broadcasted from or shown at a venue because perspectives are pre-selected by media directors and broadcasters for the remote viewing audience. The remote viewing audience can utilize television sets to view broadcasted video transmitted through cable television, satellite and radio frequency (RF) transmissions. Computers can also be used to view streaming video data transmitted over data networks. Despite the availability of remote resources for the remote viewing audience user to view video captured by cameras at entertainment venues, the user is still currently restricted to viewing a single pre-selected (or released) video. Furthermore, video perspectives are limited by the amount and placement of cameras located within the entertainment venue and controlled by entertainment venue operators and licensees. Even in situation where multiple perspectives of an activity are recorded, images recorded from various perspectives are not synchronized to a particular time period and location. What are needed are more video viewing options for remote viewing audiences where multiple perspectives of an activity are available as recordings. What is also needed are video media viewing options that enable remote viewing audiences to view multiple perspectives of an activity from the same point in time and at different angles with respect to the activity.
It is therefore desirable given the present invention that remote viewing audiences be provided enhanced viewing options in the form of multiple viewing perspectives captured by cameras within the entertainment venue as well as any other activity, public or private, wherein cameras may be utilized to capture video. The present inventor believes that additional video perspectives provided in the form of new video viewing options captured at entertainment venues and of other activities not necessarily tied to an official sports venue can be provided to remote viewing audiences over current data networks (wired and wireless) for display at various user devices (e.g., computers, High Definition Televisions (HDTVs), set-top boxes such as TiVO™ devices and those provided by cable and satellite companies like Comcast™, DirecTV™ and Dish Network™, and handheld devices, such as Palm™, Blackberry™ and iPhone™ PDAs, other data/video-enabled cellular telephones, and other hand held wireless video-enabled devices such as Apple iTouch™, Nintendo DS™ and Sony Playstation™ (PSP) devices). iPhone™ and iTouch™ are registered trademarks of Apple Inc., Blackberry™ is a trademark of Research In Motion Ltd., Palm™ is a trademark of Palm Inc., TiVO™ is a trademark of TiVo Inc., DIRECTV™ is a trademark of DIRECTV Inc., Dish Network is a trademark of EchoStar Communications Corporation, Nintendo DS™ is a trademark of Nintendo of America Inc., and Sony PSP™ is a trademark of Sony Corporation Entertainment America Inc.
Much of what is needed to teach aspect of the present invention has already been described in the patent applications that are incorporated herein by reference with priority extending back to the years 2001 and 2000. Since then, video sharing websites and online communities have come into being such as YouTube.com™, MySpace.com™, Flickr™, Fancast™ and MyFrontRow.com™ for basic video and picture sharing, and Second Life™ (abbreviated SL), for more engaged interaction by community members virtually using avatars. YouTube is a trademark of Google Inc., MySpace™ is a trademark of MySpace Inc., Flickr™ is a trademark of Yahoo Inc., Facebook™ is a trademark of Facebook Inc., Fancast™ is a trademark of Comcast Corporation, MyFrontRow™ is a trademark of Front Row Technologies, LLC, and Second Life™ is a trademark of Linden Research Inc. The number on online communities with video and picture sharing capabilities continues to grow; but there is still much room for improvement in the delivery of media to end users such as those that are members of an online community, or to remote spectators watching high definition television through cable and satellite broadcasting services. Enhanced video and picture management and retrieval where multiple perspectives of the same activity when available will provide a higher level of service value to end users of current online multimedia services and resources and is what is still needed in online communities as they continue to develop. Enhanced video and picture capturing, sharing, searching and viewing capabilities for multimedia content providers, enablers and broadcasters will now be possible with the reaching of the present invention.
Handheld computing devices (i.e., also referred to as “hand held devices” or “wireless handheld devices”) have become increasingly popular over the past decade for storing and maintaining information. Many handheld devices include video recording capabilities and can communicate with available wired and wireless data communications networks including the Internet via wireless communication transceiver links to data communications networks (e.g., cellular data networks that are 3G enabled). Handheld devices that are capable of displaying and recording video and can communicate wirelessly with data networks were also taught in the prior patent applications for which the present application claims priority.
The present inventor further believes that viewing audiences can also be provided enhanced access to captured video content through servers where the data is identified for access from the multimedia servers based on title, location, date, and other related data. A geotag or geostamp is a sequence of characters that can be associated with data to denote a time and location at which a certain event occurred. A geotag can typically include information about latitude, longitude, time, and elevation. Data can be taken from Global Position Satellites (GPS). Although tags with geographical information can be used in association with captured video and pictures, current wireless handheld devices with integrated cameras, GPS and wireless data communications capabilities are not adapted to automatically tag pictures as they are taken. Geographical tagging without automation (and possible standardization) is simply not convenient for most users because tagging requires too much time or steps using available software and hardware to determine and associate with captured video and picture data.
The present inventor believes that wireless GPS-enabled handheld devices that include video cameras, video recording capabilities and wireless data communications can be utilized to provide video and still pictures with geographical information, automatically. It would also be more desirable and acceptable for general use if video and pictures could automatically be tagged with location, time and date information so that subsequent retrieval from a server can be facilitated based on a location, date and time of interest. It would also be desirable if users accessing servers containing tagged video and pictures could retrieve video and picture related data based on membership or access to a particular community, or to be able to search a point in time and location of interest. For example, a user may want to search for content from a specific GPS location and within a specific distance from the GPS location, at a specific date and within a particular point of or span in time. Such a capability would be of high value and very useful for entertainment, business and national security purposes.
The present invention enables many new capabilities for video related media to address a broad spectrum of applications and the needs of end users. The present invention provides enhancements over spectator access to video and picture related data accessible via servers, online services and communities, and over a data communications and broadcast networks and end user multimedia hardware.